The blockbuster

Does Fantastic Four's plot echo Josh Trank's Hollywood journey?

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After Sony’s abortive overhaul of Spider-Man comes another lesson in the dangers of flogging superheroes until they drop. But unlike Marc Webb’s inconclusive stint on the webslinging franchise, Fox’s handling of Fantastic Four – Marvel’s original multi-superhero squad, the rights for whom were leased out to Constantin Film back in 1986 – is a total disaster. A competent marketing campaign, casting Josh Trank’s $120m reboot in a Christopher Nolan-esque penumbra, has fooled no one. The creative chaos that allegedly resulted in Trank’s removal from the project is all over the finished film, something almost unanimously flagged up by the reviewing community (it currently has an 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes). A $26.2m debut in the States kills it stone-dead – that’s the lowest Fantastic Four opening (the 2005 version managed $56m; 2007’s sequel Rise of the Silver Surfer $58m), only slightly more than Trank’s low-budget Chronicle ($22m), and perhaps the highest profile superhero casualty since Warner Bros’ Catwoman debacle ($16.7m) in 2003.

Top territory internationally was Mexico ($5.2m), but even that was a climbdown from Rise of the Silver Surfer ($5.6m), when the country came in as second-highest overseas take Smaller South American and south-east Asian countries, like Colombia and Thailand, saw improvements on the 2007 film, but it’s going to take a hell of a lot of that kind of action to push Fantastic Four to the $200m or so it needs to stand a chance of hitting black. It’ll be interesting to see how Fox go on from here, and whether they persist with the gritty-on-paper Teller-Mara-Jordan-Bell lineup; failing to produce a sequel could see the rights revert to Marvel, who appear to be conducting a Dr Doom-like attempt to suck the entire world’s intellectual property into their mothership.

Apatow pick-me-up

With hot new comedian on the block Amy Schumer in prime snarky form, a switch of coasts to a Woody Allen-ish New York, and a bevy of sportsworld and celebrity cameos, it’s not surprising that Judd Apatow’s new film Trainwreck caught the eye in the US. A $30.1m debut there three weeks ago was the comedy impresario’s best result after 2007’s Knocked Up – and the film is already close to $100m. He’s always specialised in comedy-drama, but had possibly leaned too far towards the latter half of that spectrum with his last two films, Funny People and This Is 40. Both introverted premises that only semi-connected with audiences, they posted the weakest grosses of his career, both domestically and worldwide.

Trainwreck has hit the ground running, the blunt title and in-your-face poster pegging it as a trashy comedy in the Horrible Bosses/Bad Teacher vein, rather than the two-hour character study – of a commitment-phobic magazine writer – underneath. What would really be a tonic for Apatow is an upswing internationally, where he has never been especially strong. It’s early days on that front, but the one major market to open so far, Australia, has posted a clear career best: $4.6m (40-Year-Old Virgin, $1.6m; Knocked Up, $2.9m; Funny People, $1.5m; This Is 40, $1.9m). The UK is up next week, but improved results in Germany (also next week), Russia and Mexico (both 27 Aug) would confirm Apatow’s emotionally coloured comedy wasn’t just a noughties fad.

Mid-term reports

Why aren't kids in kids' films any more?

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A relatively uneventful box office week gives us a window to catch up on the longer-term performance of current chart denizens. Minions’ unstoppable yellow horde hit $900m this week, and a third $1bn hit in 2015 looks nailed down for Universal, with two major markets to come in the form of Italy (27 Aug) and China (13 Sept). Which would leave only Toy Story 3 ($1.06bn) and Frozen ($1.28bn) ahead of it on the all-time animation ranks. Lower down, Inside Out passed $600m, leapfrogging The Incredibles to become Pixar’s fifth most successful release: with the UK, Mexico and Korea the three top markets, its mould-breaking spirit is being rewarded in developed and developing locales alike. The numbers are well down for Ted 2 – currently on $166.6m against the first film’s $549.3m – but a $68m budget means it’s already earned its keep; it’ll be hoping for a boost from the Japan release (28 Aug), where Seth MacFarlane’s original was No 2 overseas territory. The Terminator franchise was also looking touch-and-go a few weeks ago on the possibility of another instalment, but with $322.5m in the bank Genisys’s battered hulk is dragging itself over the line. A 72.6% overseas split – easily a high for the series – indicates its new backup power source. With Schwarzenegger the first Hollywood presence to grace China on 23 August after the blackout period ends, then it could hit $400m. Which probably means another dose of quantum-timeline gibberish to look forward to.

Beyond Hollywood

The Chinese government can congratulate itself on a good old protectionist job well done over the blackout period: standout hit Monster Hunt is now not only the highest grossing domestic film ever, but also the No 2 film of all time there, having passed Transformers: Age of Extinction ($320m). Now on $331m, another $60m would nitro-inject it past Furious 7 ($390.9m). With a host of delayed US fodder on the way, there was a pileup of homegrown releases this week: new animations Mr Black: Green Star, adapted from the popular and apparently rather gory Black Cat Detective TV show, and Kwai Bo, the Fox-backed comic-book adaptation about a genius inventor. They came in 17th ($4.7m) and 22nd ($3.8m) on the global rankings respectively. Just below them in 23rd ($3.1m) and 24th ($2.9m) were fish-out-of-water fantasy romance Time to Love, about a modern city girl transported back to the Qing dynasty, and To the Fore, a rare addition to the cycling-movie canon praised by Variety for its technically dazzling riding sequences. Sole non-Chinese entrant, with $15.2m for seventh place globally, was South Korean thriller Veteran – playing into the national preoccupation with the chaebol elite with its plotline about a detective pursuing an arrogant young business heir.

The future

Warner Bros’ $75m The Man From U.N.C.L.E. remake marks the heavily punctuated last gasp of summer-blockbuster season, with director Guy Ritchie taking his first tilt at a mid-year release slot (his Sherlock Holmes movies both went out at Christmas). Bringing in Henry Cavill for the Napoleon Solo role vacated by an injured George Clooney and Armie Hammer as his Soviet counterpart Illya Kuryakin, Ritchie looks to have beefed up the action quotient – presumably in an effort to grab the attention of the target youth audience who won’t have the foggiest about the 60s TV original. But will it have anything distinctive to present in terms of cocked-eyebrow retro stylings – especially with audiences already well served earlier this year by Kingsman: The Secret Service? That film’s impressive $406.7m is one comparison point, as are fellow souped-up 60s/70s remakes Charlie’s Angels ($264.1m), Starsky & Hutch ($170.2m) and indeed the Mission: Impossible films. Both former sides of the cold-war divide – the US, as well as Russia and much of the former Soviet countries – get the film in the initial batch of 25 territories.

China sees a final flurry of releases, none especially significant, before Hollywood is back in the picture. India, meanwhile, gets another banner release in the shape of Akshay Kumar’s Brothers, about warring siblings going mano-a-mano in a mixed martial arts tournament. Having already headlined war-on-terrorism caper Baby and Sholay-referencing actioner Gabbar Is Back – two of the better performers in Bollywood’s disappointing first six months of 2015 – Kumar is having a busy year. He’ll be looking enviously up in the direction of Salman Khan, whose Bajrangi Bhaijaan last week crossed the 300-crore ($47m) mark – the second film to do so after Aamir Khan’s PK. Could the impact of those films, as well as the Telugu epic Baahubali, herald a Chinese-style box office explosion in the offing in India?